Dear Sue,
In Iran, students spend 5 years in a primary school, 3 years in a secondary school, 3 years in a high school and 1 year in a pre-university.
Most students are usually out of school in a summer, almost 3 months.
Students at university can take a summer semester and for this semester they can get a few lessons so they usually don't do this.
We don't have a winter holiday, instead of it we have Norooz holiday about 2 or 3 weeks.
Holidays in Iran are a lot, although we fall into this habit and like it, it is not good for us.
I can say about cost of schools,
In recent years, parents must pay during a registration and the cost depends on schools.
We have two types of schools: governmental and nonprofit.
Some costs of governmental schools are paid by parents and some by the government and the total cost of nonprofit schools are paid by parents so these schools get more money.
We have several types of universities: governmental, nonprofit, unattached,...
All universities except governmental ones get money and the costs of some of them are very high and the degree of a governmental university is more creditable than others.
